ABSTRACT
This may be seen as unnecessarily harsh in the light of the fact that the offence took place in a domestic setting and, so, the value of the electricity ‘stolen’ could not have been high. It may be that the judicial view was based on the fact that, at this time, the ‘owner’ was a publicly owned (in other words, State owned) utility. Whether a different view needs to be taken of the deterrence when the owner is simply a private company remains to be seen.
